Talk:Agitprop

POV and Factual Incorrectness
"Such groups as the International Socialists are often seen today as being merely vehicles for agitprop because of their lack of involvement with the working class - their only source of members today being university students."

This is obviously POV, not to mention being factually incorrect. I'm deleting this sentence rather than sticking a POV marker on it because it seems to me that it doesn't support the article in any way, nor add any kind of understanding. It seems to simply be a dig at socialists, which is fun in the pub, but inappropriate in a Encyclopedia article.

In fact, due to the obvious POV nature of the latter part of the second sentence of this paragraph:

"Fundamentalist Christian websites that promote a return to pre-1960s ideals in such areas as music, literature, family life etc. might also be described as agitprop, though they rarely are in practice."

And the use of the term 'pre-sixties ideals' (which is absolutely meaningless, and devoid of historical basis) I'm deleting the paragraph these two sentences form. If someone would like to come up with better or better worded examples, please do.

The last dig at conservatives has no foundation and adds little to this article "Today, it is most closely linked with the American conservative political movement, that uses a combination of propaganda and active defunding to destabilize liberal politics".

I am open to hear the argument, but there is nothing supportive of this contention presented and comes off as an opinion.


 * Thank you for catching it. It's clearly not encyclopædic.  Accordingly, I have deleted it. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 14:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There are an awful lot of uncited comments in this article. I don't think anyone disputes the validity of it but in a reference-standard article these points need to be far better referenced. For example "In the Western world, agitprop often has a negative connotation" may well be true but without referencing, it is nothing more than a point of view which might be open to dispute. Also, calling something "leftist" is rather facile when dealing with an organisation like Agitprop. Lots of things are "leftist" (usually a pejorative term used by US conservatives anyway) but not everything "leftist" is Agitprop. Flanker235 (talk) 04:26, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Translation request
Any chance of a translation of the russian that appears in the new picture? Or at least a description of the subject matter?
 * click at the image. mikka (t) 20:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Merge Proposal
I have just proposed the merger of Agitative propaganda into this article. Pascal.Tesson 01:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

A ref for future use

 * С. Якобсон, Г. Д. Лассвелл ПЕРВОМАЙСКИЕ ЛОЗУНГИ В СОВЕТСКОЙ РОССИИ (1918 - 1943) (Политическая лингвистика. - Выпуск (1)21. - Екатеринбург, 2007. - С. 123-141)

Rail routes
The following section "...an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda.[4] It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages." needs improvement. Why "if it passed through villages"? Rail lines are usually more or less invariable. A train either passes through villages or it doesn't, unless villages sprang up and disappeared between trips, which seems unlikely. I would suggest that the final sentence be changed to read "_as_ it passed through villages." Also, I find it difficult to understand why a printing press was needed to _reproduce_ posters. Wouldn't it have been more efficient for the train simply to leave with a stock of posters instead of carrying a printing press? Surely if there was a press, it would have been used to _compose_ posters created during the tour - perhaps in response to events, debates, or inspirations arising as the tour progressed. This point should be addressed.

Also, I can't resist mentioning that I approve of the laudable efforts to remove any suggestion that the right wing in the US uses agitprop. Nothing should be allowed to remain in this article that suggests that agitprop was anything but a Soviet phenomenon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lestrad (talk • contribs) 03:47, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Except that everyone including, but not limited to, the US right wing - uses propaganda. Agitprop is a very specific example of it, almost a trade name. Flanker235 (talk) 04:37, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

that's quite an opening sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.225.200.133 (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite the first sentence
That first sentence is tl;dr and opaque, and sounds rather POV. Bthylafh (talk) 03:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't know what "tl;dr" is supposed to mean, and I don't know how the first sentence read when the above was posted, but here's how it reads now: "Agitprop (/ˈædʒɨtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп [ɐɡʲɪtˈprop], derived from agitation and propaganda)[1] is stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message." Whoever wrote that should be shot. Compare it to the opening sentence in the comparable Encyclopedia Britannica article: "agitprop, abbreviated from Russian agitatsiya propaganda (agitation propaganda), political strategy in which the techniques of agitation and propaganda are used to influence and mobilize public opinion." Notice in the second opening sentence the subject-predicate agreement. TheScotch (talk) 09:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Different subject
"Agitprop" has a narrow and specific meaning. This is not propaganda in general. We have another page, Propaganda in the Soviet Union. Perhaps some materials I just removed belong there... My very best wishes (talk) 18:01, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Several inaccuracies
The article has several inaccuracies and seems to have a general anti-Bolshevik bias:


 * The Bolsheviks' power over the provisional government lay in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, because they could shut down industry and government by calling in workers and soldiers to strike and demonstrate.
 * This was not true for most of the time of the rule of the provisional government. The Bolsheviks only gained control over the most Soviets a few weeks before the October Revolution: Before that the Soviets where dominated by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. This was also reflected in the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets (July 1917). Actually the Bolsheviks only gained majority in September in most Soviets.


 * The capability of strikes allowed the Bolsheviks to shut down any newspaper they wanted, creating a highly effective censorship mechanism that put a stop to the voice of the opposition.
 * It doesn't make any sense to speculate about capabilities, what counts are facts. The Bolsheviks didn't shut down anything before the Russian Civil War except extreme right-wing papers like from the Black Hundreds. In a civil war, there is always censorship, so what happened in the civil war is not extraodinary and should not be mentioned. The Whites also did censorship in the areas they controlled. But even in during the civil war the Bolsheviks don't seem to have shut down many rival "socialist" papers. The Mensheviks where quite hostile to the Bolsheviks since the real depth of the split became obvious in 1907, but the Bolsheviks had a tactic of a United Front until they where directly and obviously betrayed by the other "socialist" parties in the 1921 Kronstadt Uprising.


 * The part of the Literacy campaign makes the assumption, that the sole purpose of the campaign was to spread propaganda. This is not true, literacy is necessary for the development of Socialism and for any higher development of any society (even capitalist and pre-capitalist societies can't reach higher levels without higher levels of literacy). --MrBurns (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I removed most of nonsense. As for literacy, please do not forget that at thse times the word propaganda was not an insult. And yes, propaganda of the communism was one of the major goals of literacy campaign. I suspect the section was written as a student assignment, taken mostly from single book. - Altenmann >talk 04:25, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * For the literacy campaign: yes, spreading propaganda was one of it's goals but not the only one. The other goal was to build one of the foundations needed for a modern society. Russia was about 100 years back in 1917 an the low literacy was one of the symptoms of this. The Bolsheviks certainly did a lot of bad things under Stalin, but one thing that they achieved was that they where able to make up about 100 years backwardness in less than 40 years, although this process was consierably slowed down by the Russian Civil War and later by the inefficiency of the Stalinist beaurocracy (which was still more efficient than capitalist economy at that time). The most obvious sign of this was Sputnik, but there where also other signs like the high standard of living for workers in the 1950s in Russia (comparable to the west at that time).
 * But I think the text is ok now. Although it should be expanded, but of course balanced and with sources. --MrBurns (talk) 23:42, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Paragraph on Agitprop's Spread
The line about soviet agitprop theater in the final paragraph ought to be moved elsewhere or removed.

The final paragraph is about how the medium spread beyond the soviet union, not ap theater as a whole. Its confusing to bring up european agitprop and then immediately switch back to soviet work. Soviet theater might merit its own paragraph above? Not sure. 72.39.65.233 (talk) 07:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

It's beyond misleading for this page to characterize, through missing information and cherry-picked information, agitprop as something that existed in the soviet union and no where else, and doesn't exist anymore. Any examples of US agitprop campaigns across the world? I can think of 3 off the top of my head, all in latam, spreading anti-communist posters, funding rebels, and commissioning art... no one on wikipedia can think of a single non-soviet examples of agitprop? I don't even research this stuff, this is not just disheartening, it's ironic considering what page we're on. (Hint hint: I know people know about this, why isn't it here?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2406:D501:F:DEB:0:0:0:A01E (talk) 16:16, 27 December 2023 (UTC)